“No, Betta. That’ll leave you too vulnerable!”
“It’s my choice.” She closed her eyes and released her breath, the pale blue of the rising moon shining on her as she cast. The words she murmured were unintelligible to me this far away. Blue light surrounded her, lifting her off her feet in the confines of the cage. And then she fell, crouching on the balls of her feet with the prime amulet in her hands. It pulsed with the azure coolness of the Moon magic within.
She tossed the amulet to me, a stroke of peace painting her face in porcelain.
I caught it and held it tight in my hand.
“Now we wait.”
Night fell. The cold light of the moon filtered through the trees, but somehow its energy didn’t make it through the bars to Betta. An owl hooted in the distance. We moved around in our cages as much as we could trying to generate body heat to keep from freezing in the April chill.
“That mule better come back for us soon,” I grumbled.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Look, Piper.”
Betta’s night vision was better than mine. The creak of a wooden cart reached me before I could make out the shape of the mule returning. “Are you ready?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Betta’s reply came, with a determination that I’d never heard from her before.
“Whatever happens, just know I love you.”
“You too, Piper. And I’m sorry.” Betta settled into the floor of the cage.
I took a deep breath and pinched my skin, careful not to draw blood. The pain brought tears to my eyes. Good.
“Betta, wake up! Don’t die on me, Betta!” I sobbed as the mule drew closer.
He released the cart and went to Betta’s cage, sniffing her still form.
“She’s frozen. She’s dying, mule!” I cried out. “She’s no use to you dead.” I spat on the ground at his feet and slammed my hands against the bars.
He pulled a key from his robes and unlocked her cage. He swung the door wide and wrapped a hand around Betta’s ankle. As he leaned forward, she kicked out, striking him in the face hard enough to turn his head and throw him backward out of the cage. She scrambled to her feet and jumped on him, punching his face over and over again until she cried out in pain holding her bloody fist to her chest.
The mule lay still. She grabbed his robes and slammed his head against the frozen ground. Her actions were not the beautiful savage chi we learned at the Enclave. It was as if she was channeling the spirit of a street brawler from one of the musty Pre-Ap paperbacks we’d take turns reading aloud sitting by the fire in the great hall.
“Is he dead?” I whispered, although there was no one else around to hear me.
“I don’t know,” she said without looking at his body.
“Unlock my cage.”
Betta stood to retrieve the key from the lock of her cage door—and the mule pulled a wicked blade from his robes and lunged at her. Betta started to turn and her eyes met mine as the curved blade sunk into her sternum. She only managed to get out a single word, “Pipe . . .”
The mule jerked the knife up, opening a wide space in the center of her chest. She collapsed against him, blood spattering onto his face. He drove her to the ground and lowered his head to her chest, sniffing at the gory wound. He reached a hand in and pulled out her heart. He held it up as the moonlight broke through the bars of the cage to shine on the mass of flesh. The heart reflected a pale blue light as if the moon were saying goodbye to one of its own.
I wailed and fell to my knees. I cursed, beating the floor of the cage as I watched him bring her heart to his lips and bite. Tears came as I gagged, heaving, though there was nothing left for my stomach to expel. I slumped over, a useless ball of mage puddled into a corner as the mule feasted on my best friend until there was nothing left but bones.
After he was done, the mule cleaned himself by the fire and chattered about his plan to please his master. “A bright, strong mage for breeding.” He giggled. “Master will be pleased. The name of Machovy will no longer be banned from his halls.” He sniffed at me. “Your friend was nice, but you’ll be better. She was weak, odd. You’ll be stronger.”
“I won’t let you take me alive. I’ll die before letting you breed me with some monster.” I crossed my arms over my chest and sat back against the bars of the cage.
“Oh no, mage. You’ll be bred with the kylen. I have a debt to repay.” He nodded and stood, stretching in front of the fire.
I watched him tug on the wooden cart, backing it up to my cage. Like a monkey, he climbed the side, looped a thick rope through the ring at the top. He jumped back to the ground and pulled at the rope until the cage toppled over onto the wooden cart.
I hit the side of the cage hard. I would be covered in deep purple bruises if, by some miracle, I survived this night. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the trees as the cart lurched along the forest floor, headed toward my death.
The stench of sulfur was strong as we rolled farther underground, deeper into the place where Darkness dwelled. I opened my eyes when the cart bumped to a stop. Creatures of the night swarmed around me, sniffing and poking, as if I were there for their amusement.
“Get the cage upright and take her to the kylen,” Machovy commanded. The creatures obeyed. I scrambled to my feet as they righted the heavy cage. The mule unlocked the door and misshapen hands grabbed at me everywhere they could. I shrieked and pulled away, but there were too many. I was jerked from the cage. A burlap bag was thrown over my head and tied in place. Rough rope also bound my hands, and I was stripped of anything I could use against the Darkness—my knife, amulets, shoes, and belt—all but the items I’d hidden within my clothes. They led me down a dirt path, the occasional stone piercing the soles of my feet and stinging. I thought I could hear things following behind, lapping up the blood from my footprints.
I don’t know how long, how deep we marched. Then heat started to build, a glowing ember low in my belly. The kylen was close. The sound of metal scraping against metal pulled me back from the enchantment of the glowing ember. The burlap was stripped from my head. I breathed in, gasped as I took in what lay before me.
The kylen was shackled to the stone wall at the opposite end of a cell. He pulled ineffectually against the chains encircling his wrists and his head sagged. Sweat gleamed on his skin in the firelight.
The heat exploded in me, and I fell to my knees, slumping in the mule’s grasp. I felt as much as heard the kylen stand, his wings outstretched in his response to the heat sparking between us.
“Get to your feet, mage. Your mate awaits.”
I was thrust forward into the cell, skidding onto the ground, scraping my palms on the stone floor. An iron door swung closed and metal clanged against metal as the mule turned the key, locking us in.
I scrambled to the corner farthest from the kylen and huddled there.
“Where’s the other mage?” the kylen growled.
“Dead.”
“You feel it, too?” he asked. I knew he meant the heat that coursed through my veins, burning me from the inside out.
I nodded.
“Then stay over there,” his tone was harsh, dampening the heat like a wet blanket thrown over a fire.
“I’d planned to.”
“They intend to breed monsters from us. We don’t need to make their job easier for them.”
I kept silent, my mind wandering to Betta, seeing her body fall with her eyes locked on mine.
“She was your friend?” the kylen asked.
“Yes. Sister and friend.”
“There’s nothing you can do for her now except save yourself. And me, while you’re at it.”
I looked up at the kylen. His eyes were dark, the light of the torch on the wall dancing in them.
“Call mage in dire. Save us both,” the kylen said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I’d rather die. I can’t go back now. Betta’s gone. It’s my fault. Death would be better.” I turned my back to
him.
“You’re an idiot,” he mumbled.
Anger rose in my chest replacing the sorrow of only moments before. I turned back to him and hissed, “Why would I save you? What good would it do me? I’m not making it out of this alive. I left the Enclave without a chaperone. Do you know what they do to mages who leave like that? I’d rather die here than return and face a lifetime with her death on my hands.”
“Lucky me. I am trapped in here with a suicidal mage . . .” He lowered his eyes, breaking contact with mine, signaling the conversation was over.
The kylen fell silent, sleeping perhaps, so I curled down on my side and closed my eyes against the darkness. I lost all sense of time without the sun, the moon, the tides to guide my hours.
Betta came to me in the darkness and spoke. “Piper, wake up.”
I turned toward her voice, expecting the weightlessness of a dream, but instead winced with pain. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around. She wasn’t there. It had been but a dream. I stretched and looked over at the kylen—still sleeping—before pulling out the prime amulet Betta had given me. You know what to do, a voice whispered from the remnants of my dream.
And suddenly I did. I activated the working stored inside, and the amulet shifted to pale blue, the color of Betta’s magic. It was almost as if I could feel her with me though I knew her bones lay scattered in the woods.
I looked up, and she stood over me, white lace trailing from a long gown that covered her feet, her white-blonde hair glistening with the light of an impossible moon. Angelic, just as she had always been, but now bathed in the blue light of the moon.
I pulled myself up onto my elbows and scooted back to prop myself against the stone wall. I reached a hand out to her, but she only shook her head.
“Am I still dreaming?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she drifted to the other side of the cell and knelt beside the kylen. She laid her small, pale hand on his shoulder. He shifted in his sleep and his breath caught. She ran her fingers over the demon iron chains holding him to the wall.
I watched as the metal she touched began to glow, the same white blue that swirled within the confines of her cage in the woods.
The kylen’s eyes flew open and he screamed in pain. He jerked his hands away from the wall, trying to escape the blisteringly cold iron. And the chains broke.
“What did you do to me, mage?” he hissed, crouching low, ready to pounce.
I scrambled to my feet, still pressed against the wall. “Nothing. I didn’t . . .” I stopped and looked around. The ghostly image of Betta was gone.
“What the bloody hell was that then?” he said, blowing on his burns.
“I think it was a projection stored in a working, in this amulet she gave me before she died.”
“Your dead friend?”
“Yes.” I crept closer as I spoke, close enough to speak without my voice echoing through the cavern, but far enough away that the heat was bearable.
“They don’t know you’re free. Whoever comes in next, you take them out, whatever you have to do. I’ll grab the key and make sure the door doesn’t close on us. Then it will just be a matter of finding our way out of here. I might be able to do it, if the sea is close enough.”
“You’re a Sea mage, then?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m weak here, surrounded by earth. My sister, Betta, she was a Moon mage. She would have been just as weak. We liked to work together. It’s been so long since I’ve conjured anything more than a few basic charms alone, I’m not even sure if I remember how.” I laughed and wiped away a tear. My heart ached for my sister.
“That isn’t a sound we usually hear down here,” came a voice from outside the cell. “Making merry, little doves?” The mule came to the bars and looked at us. I crouched near the kylen; he’d positioned himself back under the shackles as if he were still chained.
“No. Not for you.” The kylen pulled his feet underneath himself as he spoke. “You want us to breed? Get in here and make us, mongrel.”
I braced myself, ready for the attack. The mule was in the cell and on the kylen quicker than I could see. He was faster than the mules I was used to in the Enclave. Perhaps the Dark ones were different.
“Now!” I screamed, as the kylen brought the iron manacles down onto the mule’s head.
“I will not be part of your experiments, mule. And neither will he.” I fell into a cat stance and drew my fingers into a shaking claw, the most effective move I could remember.
The kylen looped a chain around the mule’s neck. “Get the blade,” he growled as he pulled back on the mule’s neck.
“I’m working on it!” I cried as I dropped my stance and moved, trying to catch the blade without losing a piece of myself in the process.
“Forgive me,” the kylen whispered as he yanked the chain, the snap of the mule’s neck echoing in the silence.
The body slumped at the kylen’s feet, and I knelt to retrieve the knife from where it had fallen. I backed away when I saw the lust in his eyes. He stepped toward me and grabbed my arm, pulling me to him and sniffing, inhaling my scent.
I moaned, gritting my teeth against the heat exploding inside me. Summoning everything I held within myself, I jerked my arm away and turned toward the cell door. “Not now,” I panted.
“Right.” He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Now what?”
“We get out of here, I guess.”
He nodded and knelt by the fallen creature. He said a few words over the body, perhaps asking for the Most High to have mercy on him. The kylen picked up the blade and handed it to me, handle outward. I wrapped my fingers around it. The memory of the blade sliding into Betta’s chest came back to me, sudden and intense. The blade that may have stolen my best friend’s life could be the only thing that saved mine. Guilt washed over me in waves.
The kylen took my hand. “It’s not your fault.”
The mage heat flared at the contact and we immediately separated. He stepped out of the cell and began walking up the tunnel. I nodded and wiped my face. I followed him out into the tunnels to find the light once more.
“I think we’re going in circles,” I said as we passed a now-familiar pile of bones for the third or fourth time. “We’ll never get out of the maze this way.”
“I was unconscious when they brought me down here. I didn’t see how we came.”
“They covered my eyes. I know we took several turns and kept descending, but that’s all I remember.”
“Why haven’t we seen more spawn down here?” he pondered, kicking over the bones.
“Maybe they’re waiting to ambush us.”
“That’s certainly positive thi—” His words were cut short by skittering noises. Spawn rushed at us in a massive, dark wave.
“Time to fight,” I said, falling into a ready stance.
The kylen pulled a large bone from the pile at his feet.
I moved into a whirlwind move, the foul knife cutting a swath through the attacking spawn, my free arm blocking, keeping the spawn from my vitals. Whenever I cut left, the kylen’s bone club would smash right. We weren’t elegant or subtle, but we took down dozens.
I moved back and stumbled, my hand flying to my chest as I gasped. I felt something there, and then I remembered. The woods. The crystal vial. Thank the Most High I’d not stuffed it in my bag. I pulled out the vial and tugged out the cork. The water inside glowed faintly blue, Moon magic glimmering in conjunction with my Sea magic.
Smiling, I drew on the small amount of creation energy I’d stored in the vial and pushed my body to move faster, taking heads and removing limbs. My breath came in heavy gasps, and I landed with a grunt as one of the creatures jumped on me, knocking me to my back. I pulled on the last of the stored energy and cast Blinding Flash, sending the creature backward with his arms covering his eyes. I jumped up and sliced open his belly, gore covering me and the ground.
The kylen called out to me and I returned his call. He c
ame to me and offered a hand. The last of the spawn had fallen. For now. He pulled me to my feet. “How did you do that?”
“It was a tactic Betta and I had worked out to use if we ever got in a situation like this. Except that she was supposed to cast the spell; I can’t cast Moon spells. But somehow it felt right to try. And it worked.” I thought of the pale blue glow that illuminated the vial, and tears sprang to my eyes. She’d saved me again.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’ll be sore tomorrow, that’s for sure.”
“If tomorrow ever comes,” he said, looking both ways down the tunnel.
“Hmm. Knock that wall over there,” I said, indicating a place that glowed slightly with Dark energy, different from the rock on either side. He took his bone club and swung it against the wall. The rock was only inches thick and crumbled revealing another tunnel just beyond.
“Hence the going around in circles,” he said as he stepped through.
We moved through the new tunnel, definitely upward now. Other spawn came from the darkest corners and we fought. Back to back, we parried and dodged, working in strikes as we could, battling the scourge. One by one they fell, and bodies littered the ground around us. The kylen grabbed my hand, pulling me farther up the tunnel. The remaining spawn gave chase, but the kylen pressed on, swinging his bone club and cracking their skulls. I buried the blade in the last spawn and went down, exhaustion overtaking me. The kylen lifted me from the ground and steadied me on my feet. A hint of heat blossomed low in my body, and I backed away. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, as I pushed down the desire and started upward again.
Too tired to talk, we soldiered on, the only sound our feet against the ground. After some time, I broke the silence. “I think we’re almost there.”
“Why’s that?”
“Did you notice we haven’t seen any spawn? We’re probably very close to the surface.”
“Hmm. You’re right. Without their leader, they don’t seem particularly brave. I never did figure out why the mule wanted us for breeding.”